Category Archives: Owner’s Corner

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Humble beginnings in our Park City location. Our “commercial space” was really more like a glorified garage. This video goes back to 2009. We would not open for another year, but the invitation to festivals were already beginning. In our little space, we began recipe development, working our day jobs and brewing evening and week ends. What you see is a 15 gallon Sabco system. Trent read that Sam Caglione from Dog Fish Head began his brewing career on a Sabco. He figured, if it was good enough for Sam, it would be good enough for us.

Trent worked his magic on the little brew system, but as you can see, it doesn’t hold a lot of liquid. We got a last minute invite to a festival and didn’t know how we were going to make enough beer. Well, we got our thinking caps on and decided we could make it happen if we had 2 systems. A few phone calls later, we found a generous soul who let us borrow his Sabco.

Mountain Brewer’s Festival, June 2010. We were not open yet. At this time we had rented a glorified garage in Park City to begin recipe development and were working week ends and evenings. One day we got an invitation to Mountain Brewer’s Festival. Those volunteers are “on it”! It had not occurred to us to go, but we took them upon it. The rest is history.
1st Photo on the Left: Trent and Mike Riedel from Utah Beer Blog. 2nd Photo: Trent manning the booth at our first beer festival. 3rd Photo – We didn’t have a jockey box so Trent decided to construct our own. It was quite the invention. It was a 55gallon drum on wheels. It worked perfectly until you had to change out the kegs and all the ice fell to the bottom. Lol.

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

Harriet Tubman

Who said beer inspired products had to be cheesy, sleazy and cheapo? Out with macro brand chatzkys and in with Craft!

Ideas about designer beer inspired products have been flying around my head for a couple of years. Beer is the priority, so we’ve been funneling all our resources towards stainless steel. You can imagine just how big my eyes got when I ran into zazzle? I’m in complete fascination and wasted no time in opening my very own online “Brewery Boutique”. What is one to do at 3:56 a.m. when one can’t sleep? Design a new product! This mini messenger bag was inspired by my painting “Hop Medley“. I’ve been fixated on painting hops for some time. Part of the reason is because hops are so symbolic of beer. It’s been difficult to find hop images I love and even harder to create th

Beer Couture Mini Messenger Bag, a Designer Beer Inspired Collection

em. This particular piece was the result of my playing around with henna design. I incorporated curves and swirls to the cones and leaves.

While most of my free time is currently consumed with learning web design and building out the Shades of Pale website, I’m sure I’ll come back to zazzle to build out a designer beer collection. Could this be a new genera of products? I suppose we could consider it Beer Couture!

A picture of our Sabco System. We heard that Sam Cagione started Dogfishhed on a Sabco System. We decided, if it was good enough for Sam it’s good enough for us….. that is… until we we had to brew 16 hours days back to back to make enough beer for a festival. In this little system Trent developed his famous Espresso Stout, Perfect Stranger Kolsch, the oh, so finicky, Parley’s Pale White Ale, and a fantastic Belgian Tripple. As of this date, we have yet to release any of these styles, which launched us into commercial brewing. Perhaps one of these days Trent will sneak a special release into production.

A special thank you Steve and Kathy for believing in us. Your estimate of how much beer we’d need to provide to you, as our first commercial account, exceeded the limits of the Sabco. Buying our next system on a budget was an adventure to say the least, but here we are a couple of years later dreaming of what is to come. For sure, we need a better way to “grain out”. Brewing is a labor of love and do mean “labor”. The grain you see is raked out manually and onto a big tub. The tub is then carried to the door and dumped on a grain cart. Trent’s big muscles come in handy. Takes him a few less trips than I, but even so, he’s lost a few pounds since he’s been brewing full time.